We are in the heart of the spring season, and everyone is planning vacations and spring cleaning. I'm a huge fan of spring cleaning! Decluttering, organizing, etc. I am down for it all! But have you ever thought about applying this idea of cleaning to your Facebook friends list?
Yep, I said it! It's time to clean out that Facebook friends list, and here's why! Do you ever scroll through your friends list just out of curiosity to see who from high school you still talk to, or what a coworker is doing now? Looking at your friends list can be a nice trip down memory lane, but have you ever wondered why certain people are still on this list?
Back in middle school, when I first created my Facebook, it was everyone's goal as well as my own to add as many friends as possible! I wanted to reach the 500+ numbers. I wanted to look like I was the popular Facebook superstar, and so I added anyone and everyone I had even remote contact with. That guy who I saw in the hallway between classes? Added. That one girl on my bus who was in the same science class as me? You bet she made it on my friends list. But then something strange happened: I grew up. I changed schools. I changed jobs once I worked. And now I'm in college. Every now and then, I scroll through my friends list and catch someone who I may not have spoken to in years, or even ever. And it makes me wonder...why are we still friends?
I'm not saying to literally go through your friends list and just start unfriending people because, "Oh, it's been 6 months and we haven't said a word to each other. Bye!" What I'm trying to get at is people change. You change. Sometimes the people you once saw every day, and knew so well just disappear. You go on different paths. Something more important that I learned though was social media privacy.
I didn't want all these people reading my posts. Not that I was posting anything bad, I just didn't like the idea of people who I barely knew looking at family photos, or reading posts about where I was traveling to, or what I was doing. I wanted Facebook to be my inner circle of family and friends. So I made the decision to clean my friend's list because honestly out of those 500+ friends, I maybe only really knew 100 of them, and of those 100, I could really only name about 30 who I had frequent interactions with. I had strangers on my friend's list.
Now, I have friends and family all over the country, and although I may not see them every day, or even every year, I am still invested in their life and what they are doing. I care for them because I really know them. I couldn't say the same for that girl I friended back in middle school, or the guy who I only saw in the hallway. I had no idea who they were. You could make the argument that I should have reached out, but in all reality, don't we have people on our friend's list that we look back on and wonder why? Why did we add them just for numbers? I mean, let's be honest with ourselves.
Now, don't just drop everyone who had nothing to do with you in a month (that's cray-cray!), but maybe take a closer look at that list of yours. Real friendships go outside of social media, and if you can scroll through and see someone who you can't even name, or maybe even remember, should they really be there seeing all of your posts?Are you really invested in all of these people and maintaining their friendships? Do you have some people on there who are maybe weighing you down and causing negativity?
I'm down to 153 friends and although I don't see all 153 regularly, they are people who I want around me, who I do talk to and remember, and who I strongly care about. And for me, that's a better feeling than playing the numbers game.
